


In the Library

by Sixthlight



Series: A Few Years Later [8]
Category: Rivers of London - Ben Aaronovitch
Genre: Blow Jobs, Established Relationship, Future Fic, M/M, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-15
Updated: 2015-02-15
Packaged: 2018-03-12 22:11:45
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,822
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3357113
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sixthlight/pseuds/Sixthlight
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the first few weeks after we made the leap to a personal as well as professional relationship – okay, a more personal relationship – behaving ourselves got really difficult.</p>
            </blockquote>





	In the Library

**Author's Note:**

> The incident in the library that Molly will possibly never forgive them for, which has been alluded to in earlier stories in this 'verse.

The question of Nightingale’s real versus apparent age aside, the thing is that both he and I are, at this stage of our lives, sober and responsible adults. Or as sober and responsible as anyone. Certainly we know how to behave ourselves in public, especially when it comes to the relationship we’re not having if the Department of Professional Standards asks about it. (They never have and I’m pretty confident they never will, if only because the mere sight of our unit’s name probably sends them to the fainting couch by now. Mere consensual sexual impropriety in our direct line of management isn’t going to cut it.)

But for the first few weeks after we made the leap to a personal as well as professional relationship – okay, a _more_ personal relationship – behaving ourselves got really difficult. As I said, we’re adults. We’re also adults who were finally getting laid regularly after what had been a decently lengthy dry spell on my part and I have no idea how long on his, and were living with five other people, four of whom weren’t supposed to have any idea about our new extracurricular activities. I’d given up on Molly after the first time I’d opened the door to leave Nightingale’s room at an indecently late hour and nearly walked straight into her. Whatever her opinion was on the whole thing, she kept it to herself. She kept everything to herself, to be fair, but if Molly was annoyed with you she had ways of making it known, and none of them had been forthcoming.

So we were going about our normal routines, magic (teaching, practicing, experimenting with) and paperwork and crime-solving and what you might call community policing for our very unique community, and even within the confines of our own home we couldn’t so much as lay a finger on each other outside the privacy of our bedrooms. When we could both manage to be in one of them at the same time, that was. While still breaking in our shiny new relationship.

I feel this goes some way towards explaining the thing in the library.

*

It started quite innocuously. Nightingale had said he wanted to refresh his memory on something – one of the tricks about teaching people, which I had learned from him, was reading up on whatever it was you needed them to know just before they asked about it – and had gone to the magical library to do so. The general or mundane library held our texts about the magical world, but they were in English or French or occasionally German, with a sprinkling of Greek and Arabic for flavour; the _magical_ library held the texts about magic itself, and they were almost all in Latin, and never English. Over my apprenticeship I’d gotten comfortable with Latin and German, could just about parse out Greek, and I was working on the Arabic; luckily I had a few colleagues I could ask for help on that one. The apprentices all had at least a little Latin by now, but were still mostly swearing at Isaac Newton and Pliny, and never came near the magical library unless they were looking for one of us.

In any case, that particular day was a Sunday. All of them were out of the Folly entirely, for one reason or another; we weren’t working any fast-moving cases right then, and it was the weekend besides. But I want to emphasise that despite this serendipitous occurrence, when I wandered back from the tech cave, where I’d been, to the main building, it was because I had a question I wanted to ask Nightingale. That was it, really.

I found him where he’d said he’d be, in the magical library, on the first floor. When I walked in, he was standing next to one of the bookshelves, frowning between two texts. The door swung closed, if not fully shut, behind me; again, I would like to emphasise, this is a quirk of the building’s age and design and was definitely not planned on my part.

And, okay, I might have stopped for a second and just looked at him. He was wearing grey trousers and a pale blue Aran jumper, over shirt and tie, of course, because Nightingale considers casual dress anything that isn’t a three-piece suit. Even on a Sunday. There was a considering frown on his face and my fingers were suddenly all itchy to go touch him, just walk up beside him and put an arm around his waist and then –

No, okay, I could do this, I was totally professional. Then he looked up at me and smiled. He’d developed a habit of doing that.

“Hello, Peter,” he said. “Come to look something up?”

“I had, um,” I said. “I had a question.” I wandered towards him, all casual-like, because it’s weird to have a conversation from opposite ends of the room, right?

“Oh?” said Nightingale, but he wasn’t really paying attention to me; he re-shelved one of the books, and put the other on the closest table. Or – he wasn’t really paying attention to what I was _saying,_ because I saw his eyes flick up and down, and, Christ, I could just about manage this if it was only me getting distracted but if he was going to do _that –_

“I…have totally forgotten what it was,” I admitted. “Sorry.”

“I’m sure it’ll come back to you,” he said, but not like he was actually concerned about whether it would.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” I said desperately, because I was trying to prove something here. Although in retrospect, I’m not sure what.

“Yes, I -” He glanced down at the book he’d just picked. “Yes?”

And then I made the crucial mistake of looking him in the eye – somehow, the distance between us had narrowed to not very much at all – and if you’d asked me what that book was, or if I’d recalled my question, I couldn’t have told you, although I’d just looked straight at the book’s cover and there definitely had _been_ a question or I wouldn’t have walked all the way over to the main building.

Nightingale put his hand on my arm, and that was a different kind of question. I answered it by stepping right up close to him, close enough that there wasn't any pretending about why. The smile this got me could truthfully have been called a smirk. It wasn’t a bad expression on him, in my personal opinion; but I wasn’t above kissing it off him, so I did.

Nightingale kissed me back with open-mouthed intent; I leant my weight into him, up against the bookshelf. He put his hand on my back, pulling me closer still; I threaded my fingers through his hair and cupped my hand behind his head to cushion it against the hard edge of the bookshelf. We settled into it comfortably. We didn’t have anywhere to be. And right now there wasn’t anywhere else I could imagine wanting to be, except here, making out with Nightingale in the magical library. _Magical library_ doesn’t mean _magic books_ , so there weren’t any _vestigia_ to catch my attention, any more than anywhere else in the Folly. The physical heat of our bodies, the sweet hum of arousal, the over-sensitised feeling in my skin, those were all us. It was _good_ , just like this.

Nightingale was _really_ into it by then, same as I was. I could tell, not because he was hard, because I doubted you could find a guy who _wouldn’t_ be after a few minutes of serious full-body making out, but because he was pliable in a way he only became in bed, or situations that really should require a bed. I wasn’t really sure where I meant to go with this, or where he meant it to go, whether we were going to just keep making out or take it somewhere else or - that was, until Nightingale pressed shamelessly against my thigh when I licked at his earlobe and I knew, all of a sudden, exactly where I wanted this to go next. I broke away from the line he was kissing down my neck, and sank to my knees.  I put a hand on his fly, which was under a bit of strain, I have to say, and asked “Okay?” Because we were in the library, after all. Which, I have to tell you, was kind of ridiculously hot for reasons I didn’t want to examine too closely. I was just…going with it.

I was half-expecting Nightingale to point out our location, but instead he just bit his lip and nodded, like he didn’t trust himself to speak. There were spots of colour high on his cheeks and his pupils were wide. And he was still fully-dressed, tie and all – perfectly put together, if it wasn’t for his face. And for the very obvious erection that was now right in front of _my_ face. As a picture, it was quite something. But having made the offer, I didn’t like to be _too_ much of a tease, so I unzipped him and got down to it. The noise that escaped him when I put him hand on him – still less my mouth – went straight to my own cock, but it was just going to have to wait its turn.

Nightingale and I hadn’t actually done this – quite like this; it was something about the, how to say this, the _optics_ of it, me on my knees. I’d just felt weird thinking about it, considering everything. So I hadn’t. It didn’t feel the same when we were both horizontal on a bed, or at least a flat surface; it wasn’t the actual _action_ of going down on a guy that bothered me, I liked that just as well as I did with women. And it didn’t seem to bother Nightingale, being on his knees, given several rather spectacular examples that sprang to mind. But we're pretty different people, me and Nightingale, and – anyway, chalk it up to my own insecurities.  

The moment I’d picked to finally give it a go - the middle of the day, in the library of all places, both of us fully-dressed – was just elevating the effect. But at the same time, all that was totally irrelevant right then. What was relevant was how much I wanted to, how much I liked using my mouth on him; the way he clutched my shoulder and leant back against the shelves, his knees giving out a little; the way he said my name, _god_ , I could listen to that all day. How much of a turn-on the whole thing was.

So I forgot entirely about overthinking it and just concentrated on what I was doing. I couldn’t get up to much more than straightforwardly sucking his cock like this, but it wasn’t exactly getting me any complaints; in fact, the way Nightingale was struggling to keep his hips from moving told me this wasn’t going to take very long. I wasn’t really keeping track of time, or anything except the feeling of him in my mouth, his thighs under my hands, the subdued noises he was making that were somehow even hotter than the unrestrained ones he normally made when we were in bed. But I don’t think it was very long before he was gasping and coming. I pulled off and nuzzled at him a bit while he came down from it, because it made him twitch delightfully, and say “ _Pe-_ ter,” which was equally delightful.

About two seconds later I was getting hauled efficiently to my feet and guided back against the nearest table. The thing about Nightingale is that, more than anything else, he’s capable of such intense _focus_. It’s in his eyes when he looks at you, in the feel of his _signare_ when he does magic, and it’s really, _really_ noticeable in bed. And that was what I had right now, his attention entirely on me, and in particular on a specific portion of my anatomy. He’s capable of drawing this out until the only words coming out of my mouth are _Thomas_ and _please_ – because I’m really not too proud to beg in that kind of situation and also I can tell how much he likes it when I do – but that clearly wasn’t what he was going for today. So I just clutched the edge of the table and tried really hard to stay on my feet while Nightingale put all his ruthless focus into sucking my cock like it was going out of style. All I was capable of taking notice of, right then, was the feel of his mouth and the edge of the table biting into my hands and how wobbly my knees were getting. And the sight of Nightingale on _his_ knees, jumper and shirt and tie and all, because _that_ was a sight, let me tell you. A really, really pleasant one.

So it’s really not my fault I didn’t process the faint _click_ I heard until much later.

I was much too busy closing my eyes and trying not to move too much and then losing touch with everything for a blissful little while. By the time I was back to myself Nightingale had stood up and tided himself up, and when I’d taken care of the same we made out a little more, this time with me leaning against the table, because in my opinion lazy post-coital kissing is just as good as the pre-coital kind. And knowing what we’d both just been doing – the lingering taste of it – just made it that much hotter.

“So, did you remember your question?” Nightingale asked eventually.

“I did, actually,” I told him, because I had; turns out impromptu quickies in the library are good for jogging my short-term memory, who knew. Or maybe in this case it’d just got rid of the distraction. “That case in Finchley two months ago, did we -”

But I never got to finish it, because Nightingale was frowning over my shoulder. I twisted to see what he was looking at; but there wasn’t anything there, just the door. “What is it?”

“Did you shut the door behind you when you came in?” Nightingale asked, still frowning.

And – no. No I hadn’t. It had swung shut, but I knew that this door swung shut on its own, but didn’t fully close until someone did it manually. (Or magically, whichever.)

That was when the faint _click_ surfaced in my memory.

“No, but - there isn’t anyone else _here_ ,” I said. “Except…”

Except for Molly. Who didn’t _generally_ come up here except once a week to dust, but –

I could tell Nightingale was thinking exactly the same thing I was, by his expression. There wasn’t anything to do but find out, though, so I went gingerly over to the door – still a bit wobbly in the knees, to tell you the truth – and peeked out.

The corridor looked perfectly deserted; no-one in sight. Except for the feather duster that had been conspicuously dropped about two metres away from the library door.

Nightingale came up behind me and observed the same thing. We stared at it in fascinated horror.

“So…” I said. “How much trouble, exactly, do you think we’re going to be in with her?”

“I don’t know,” Nightingale said. He was actually blushing. “I can’t say this has ever happened before.”

“What, never, really?”

“Peter,” Nightingale said. “With _whom_?”

A fair criticism; I knew Nightingale hadn’t been celibate since World War II, but I sincerely doubted he’d ever brought anyone back to the Folly. And if so not to the magical library, obviously. “I don’t know, I didn’t mean had it happened to _you_ necessarily. Molly’s been here a long time.”

“Then not that I ever heard about, though this place was so much busier then it does seem improbable. But – to answer your question – I hope you like taking your tea cold. And your coffee. And possibly your food.”

“We can always eat out,” I pointed out.

“It’ll just make her more upset,” Nightingale said, a little glumly.

This was, of course, quite true. I was going to have to apologise to her; there was an outside chance she’d accept it. Judging by Nightingale’s face and manner, he wasn’t even going to be up to that. And we were definitely going to have to be more proactive about moving things to a bedroom – not that we weren’t usually, but even if the Folly was otherwise empty. I had absolutely no wish to get caught like that again, even if we hadn’t been aware of it at the time. No wish at _all_. Because even if Molly didn't speak - she was going to give us hell about it without saying a word. 

Still. If you’re wondering.

It was _totally_ worth it.


End file.
